Two Plus Two Equals Five

Dear reader, before you start reading this article, let me caution you that though this is one of my shorter articles (in words), the topic being rather dry, may make it seem much longer. I do apologise for that.

Serving out my notice period has allowed me a lot of time to reflect and think about terminations, resignations and corporate moves of similar ilk. Three months is a long time by any standard and as my email traffic slowly grinds down, my disposable time has proportionately increased. I have spent a good bit of that time talking and discussing corporations, human capital and organisations facing brain drain, with my office colleagues. What is commonly agreed is that just like its customer base, it is much more expensive for an organisation to replace people, than it is to retain its talent. Of course when we talk of costs, I had been thinking in (one-dimensional) terms of money and the cash cost of replacement. However, what I have come to understand, is that the real cost to the organisation is much more than just financial.

There are three types of leavers, the ones who evoke the “good riddance” emotion, some others who get the “who was he anyway?” response, and finally the ones who get the “Oh no” reaction. For good forms sake, I will be referring to the “Oh no” category from now on. Every time a good resource leaves a high performing team, it destabilizes the Team and the processes they handled. It raises serious questions in the minds of the people left behind, and very often creates a domino effect in terms of others also wanting or thinking of moving on. Even though they might not actually leave, there is a discernable tilt towards looking around them and outside, or weighing options, which then could lead to something more concrete. Team dynamics do not always follow corporate hierarchies and organigrams, and hence the loss of a valued team member or two, suddenly precipitates a sense of urgency in the others to join them in showing their retreating backs.

Then there is also the residual de-motivation caused by people moving and the consequential shift in the balance of power. Every time a person leaves, it creates a wake of turbulence in the delicate balance of power in the team. New people have to fit in, seniors try to jockey for more power, and alignments are re-grafted. People in the peripheries, who get caught in the eddies of these currents, very often feel helpless as they are tossed around. Work gets reassigned, and very often the weakest (most junior?) people bear the brunt of it. New members have to make their mark, show their worth and one way to do so is to question existing processes and practices. In their enthusiasm to prove their mettle they will take on more than they can chew, and if by chance they have staff reporting to them, then these poor people will have to step up to the plate, so that their line manager can preen in front of his boss, taking the credit for the home-runs. Quite often more senior members of the team, will grab the opportunity, created by the vacuum, to pass on work to the new unsuspecting member, with similar consequences.

Then comes the actual impact of the resignation, as the loss of intangible knowledge of the incumbent is difficult to replace immediately. Handovers in this modern age are a joke. Very often, they are just references to available reports and notes, and access to stored electronic archives, which if the new joiner were to actually try to read and digest, would probably take years. The built up store of information, the unconscious competence, which comes from knowing how things work and where the levers are, is actually irreplaceable. The longer the tenure of the person parting ways, the more the storehouse of information that walks out the door with them.

Relationships with internal stakeholders, customers, and suppliers that have been forged over years of association cannot be easily replicated either. Relationships are not about positions and titles, they are more about personalities. Relationships are the lubricant in the engine of business, and the coarser the mix the more friction and heat it generates. Beyond a point the engine overheats and the consequences are felt all the way to the bottom-line. Unlike lubricants however, where competing brands have more or less the same ingredients, human dynamics cannot be easily replaced or interchanged.

The other hidden cost comes from the fact that the replacement is almost never ever, like for like. I have seen this so many times in this organisation, that in my mind it is almost a rule. In their unfettered enthusiasm to foster talent and groom future leaders, the replacement is always a bit greener around the ears, a bit younger and also weighted far above his worth. Quotas for gender, race, color and nationalities adds to the overall cost of operations. The incumbent walking away was almost always, either more experienced or more qualified, making the change a steeper climb in organisation terms.

This is a far cry from the normal cost of replacement that we hear about. However the above costs are rarely, if ever, borne by the leadership. As the more senior managers play at being Gods, indulging their whims in changing structures and reporting lines on pieces of paper, it is the people below the change-line, who have to step up their game. The inefficiencies of having a new kid on the block or new reporting lines, are absorbed as they always are, by the mules in the organisation. The mules are the bedrock of any organisation, the ones who are neither high-fliers nor upwardly mobile. They provide the organisation with stability through longer tenures at each position. They are the silent downtrodden or overlooked majority, the grunts, whose only purpose is to serve as footstools for the upwardly mobile to step on, on their way up.

In management speak, the performance of good teams is more than the sum of its parts, i.e. two plus two equals five. But regular turnover and changes in the composition of a team results in sub-optimal performance, i.e. two plus two, more often than not, equals three.